Jára Cimrman ležící, spící

The geniuses Svěrák and Smoljak created the most famous and gifted artist, inventor, architect, philosopher and teacher, Jára Cimrman, who remains desperately misunderstood by modern science. I don’t know what’s better, the story laced with unmistakable smart humour, or the performances led by Zdeněk Svěrák, whose sensitive and straightforward speech I will always admire. Some may disagree, but I really liked the opening part and all the allusions to famous but, compared to Cimrman, very mediocre, personalities and their major works. It probably doesn't reach the quality of the best Cimrman theatre plays, but it's great fun and one of the most unforgettable Czech comedies. Cimrman for president! (24.02.2012)

On one hand, this approach to the most obscure figure in Czech history gratefully varies history in various humorous sequences whose general point is the protagonist's failure due to a combination of great ambition, bad luck, and drilling, but it is also imbued with a strangely familiar melancholy. As is Smoljak's custom, the film is shot exclusively in real locations and mostly in the autumn season. There is a greyness to the image due to the use of low natural light, a feeling for the iconic images of the Lada-esque countryside (the ubiquitous wayside shrines, the sprawling avenues of fallen trees, the meadows and farmhouses) and the general atmosphere of the end of the era to which the protagonist belonged, is combined with then-contemporary passages in which people learn about him through a fetishistic display of objects of his everyday use, which is still a pretty apt comment on what history and its actors eventually turn into. (20.03.2019)

Not as good as the Cimrman theatre plays, but good fun nonetheless. (14.11.2008)